A dream of order: Hemingway --
The secret of the south: Faulkner to Percy --
The decline of war: Mailer to Vonnegut --
Professional observers: Cozzens to Updike --
The earthly city of the Jews: Bellow to Singer --
Cassandras: Porter to Oates --
The imagination of fact: Capote to Mailer --
Absurdity as a contemporary style: Ellison to Pynchon --
A personal sense of time: Nabokov and other exiles.